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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Review: Welcome to Braggsville

Welcome to Braggsville

By T Geronimo Johnson

William Morrow February 2015

354 pages

From the library

D'aron Davenport is happy to escape his Georgia hometown and immerse himself in the people and culture at UC Berkeley. He makes friends with his roommate Louis and classmates Candice and Charlie. After a mishap at a party, they dub themselves the "4 Little Indians." When D'aron reveals in class that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War reenactment, the group decides that they will show up as protesters. D'aron tries to dissuade them, but his friends (and his professor) think it's a wonderful idea. Their trip down South uncovers revelations about racism, power, and our ability to really understand each other and has devastating consequences for all of them.

Welcome to Braggsville is one of the most unique books I can recall reading. Johnson is challenging prejudices head-on, but he does it through the eyes of college students of all people. D'aron, Louis, Candice, and Charlie believe that they can upset power structures that have been in play for decades. They decide to stage a "performative intervention" at the Civil War reenactment, where they will dress up as slaves and pretend to lynch someone. That can only go well, right?

Although it is dealing with some heavy stuff, this book is often funny as well. The characters walk a line that I think many of us have walked - knowing the inherent unfairness of prejudice but also seeing how ridiculous it can be to be hyper politically correct.

"It's not that the Davenports had never had black people around their house before, or even a Chinese guy once, but never a Malaysian who looked Chinese to some and Indian to others, fancied himself black at times, and wanted to be the next Lenny Bruce Lee; a preppy black football player who sounded like the president and read Plato in Latin; and a white woman who occasionally claimed to be Native American. They were like an overconstructed novel, each representative of some cul-de-sac of idiolect and stereotype, missing only a handicapped person --No! At Berkeley we say handi-capable person -- and a Jew and a Hispanic, and an Asian not of the sub-continent, Louis always said. He had once placed a personals ad on Craigslist to recruit for those positions: Diverse social club seeking to make quota requires the services of East Asian, Jew, Hispanic, and handicapable individuals to round out the Multicultural Brady Bunch troupe...Daron felt now as he had when people had started responding to that ad, that he couldn't help but expect a spectacular disaster."

Welcome to Braggsville made me examine my own ideas about race and power. I think I could reread this book and find new moments of humor and understanding with each time I read. The writing style is incredibly unique, as Johnson utilizes different tones and styles and somehow it all works. He satirizes the problems of racism and classism that still plague some parts of the South while pointing out the hypocrisy of ultra-liberals who see themselves as above the fray. This is a book for anyone who is thinking long and hard about power and race and class right now - and really, shouldn't that be all of us?

Love your reviews, Lindsey. I'm glad that this book opened up topics for you and made you think. I love it when books are relevant to today's situations and events. The story itself sounds really interesting.